New Star Wars documentary focuses on the actors you probably never noticed

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Over the past few decades, the stories behind the Star Wars saga have been well chronicled in books, documentaries and magazines. But there are still a few stories yet to be told.

Instead of focusing on the heavy hitters, the new Star Wars documentary Elstree 1976 turns the spotlight on the background actors and tireless extras who spent their time in a galaxy far, far away wearing alien prosthetics and stormtrooper helmets. It’s fascinating to get the perspective of these unsung actors you probably didn’t even notice, to hear about how their small place in the franchise affected the rest of their lives.

Here’s the official synopsis for the film via the BFI London Film Festival:

When George Lucas began work on a mysterious project named Star Wars in North London back in 1976, no one could have predicted how it would go on to shape cinema as we know it, least of all the legions of on-screen extras. In this affectionate documentary, we meet ten of those bit performers who appeared, however fleetingly, in Lucas’ box office behemoth. Rather than the standard ‘making of’ – the likes of which have been seen countless times before – Elstree 1976 paints an intimate portrait of these performers, examining how their brushes with Lucas shaped the paths of their lives. With a cast ranging from Darth Vader himself (or David Prowse as he’s better known to his friends), to a performer whose character was cut entirely from the finished film, this is not so much a film about Star Wars as the story of a group of people united by one life-changing experience.